MidiBox SID turns Commodore 64 into 4-voice, 8-bit analog synth

The Commodore 64 did a lot of things right: the right price, the right graphics, the right games, and the right 8-bit audio chipset that allowed 12 year-old programmers to POKE and PEEK their way into analog music bliss. Modder and musician "TK" saw an opportunity in all of this for an analog synthesizer, and he went for it. Fitting it with potentiometers, LEDs, and an additional 8 SID sound chips (for a total of 8), he is able to get 4 stereo pairs of sound and 4 voices out of what he calls the Midibox SID. If you hadn't figured from the name, he did add MIDI control to the little beast. And, no, you cannot play Doom on it. Video after the break.

[Lucretius @ Jun 9th 2008 11:34AM]

Hot.

[Joe Anstine @ Jun 9th 2008 11:40AM]

the doom joke is getting old.

[JLTate @ Jun 9th 2008 11:45AM]

so i herd u liek milhous

[mrussell @ Jun 9th 2008 11:44AM]

doom on this, yea thats pretty possible.............

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Jun 10th 2008 12:10AM]

The only thing doomed is your sense of humor.

[Matt @ Jun 9th 2008 11:44AM]

If you are a musician who has a little DIY skills you should check out the other Midibox projects over at http://www.uCApps.de/. That is where all of the project schematics are kept. They range from midi controllers to sequencers to even an FM synth based off of the old soundblaster audio cards.

[mrussell @ Jun 9th 2008 11:47AM]

video coming anytime soon?

[Shane @ Jun 9th 2008 12:46PM]

Video of the original build (not the one pictured above) here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrgdErwTJ5o

On a related note, this rocks!

[ahdok @ Jun 9th 2008 11:47AM]

At least it runs Crysis at 0fps. That's as good as my computer.

[melloncollie @ Jun 9th 2008 11:53AM]

Your computer must be terrible then.

[PDubNYC @ Jun 9th 2008 12:52PM]

apparently as bad as your sense of humor...

[Richy @ Jun 9th 2008 11:57AM]

Ahh, PEEKs and POKEs. Reminds me of a programming book I had for my ZX81 called 'PEEK, POKE, BYTE and RAM'. My 5 year old brain didn't know what it meant; but my father found it very amusing. May have got him into computers too.

I shudder to think what I'd get back if I typed that into Google with the filters off...

[michaelportent @ Jun 9th 2008 12:05PM]

If they don't already have these, I'd expect Daft Punk to be wiring two of these bad boys up to their pyramid of sound gadgets as I write this.

[Michael K Pate @ Jun 9th 2008 12:16PM]

Programming music on the C64 using the SID chip... I remember it well. What is scary, though, is just how long ago (June of '83) I got that machine.

[Samurai Jack @ Jun 9th 2008 12:48PM]

Yes but does it sound like SID, the orbital Space Intruder Detector from "UFO"? That would make it truly cool.

[Mike @ Jun 9th 2008 12:48PM]

Poke 53280,0
Poke 53281,0

Set the background and boarder colors to black. First thing I did everytime I turned on the switch. Can't believe I still remember that after 20+ years. Sprites and SID commands are a fit fuzzier.

[John @ Jun 9th 2008 12:59PM]

..what about the old stand-by to reboot..

sys 64738

[Stiv @ Jun 9th 2008 1:11PM]

What was 38364 for? That's a number I remember poking on my c64 a lot. Was that cursor color?

[Wwhat @ Jun 9th 2008 1:07PM]

Noise ratio of 12dB no doubt.

[morte100 @ Jun 9th 2008 2:45PM]

Does it record output to the tape drive?

[don @ Jun 9th 2008 3:28PM]

I built a Midibox 64 (another DIY project built on the MIdibox platform), and found the community there very helpful and the process fairly easy - even for an electronics never-ever. MIdibox has been around for years, and TK (Thorsten) is the guy that drew up the original code and schematics.

As for the Noise comment, it's quite good, actually. TK's full time job was (imagine) developing midi hardware for a living, so he knows what he is doing.

[Greg @ Jun 9th 2008 7:07PM]

A work of art.

[Nando @ Jun 9th 2008 10:43PM]

Holly crap, that's amazing, i would love to make some loops with that.

[skulldriveshaft @ Jun 10th 2008 2:55AM]

I hope I'm not reading anything wrong:

"and an additional 8 SID sound chips (for a total of 8)"

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